


The Thing That Gives You Nightmares

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, Extra Treat, First Time, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Post-Coital Cuddling, Pressured Into Honeypot Missions By Organization, Trading Sex for Safety, Unexpected feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-03-30 19:32:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13958478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: Martin’s curtains are open. Beyond the blackened silhouette of the building next door, he can just make out a sliver of skyline. Stars, winking as if at a joke he doesn’t understand. They seem so much more distant than usual.The man with the Lichtenberg scar is alive, seeking revenge for the Archivist's transgression.Martin is sacrificed.





	The Thing That Gives You Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

  * For [track_04](https://archiveofourown.org/users/track_04/gifts).



> <3

In Martin’s dreams, the walls are squirming. They wriggle, writhe, patches on the faded paint like Rorschach blots in black-tipped silver. In his dreams, Martin sits and watches. He sees shapes in the clusters.

This one is Jon at his desk, head bowed over a sheaf of papers; the silvery mass does a decent approximation of his absent frown (“ _chronic resting bitch face_ ” laughs a memory of a colleague and friend, who has so drastically changed, like a butterfly broken down and folded up and forced into a cocoon). In Martin’s dreams, Jon lifts his head, sees him, and lets the lines on his forehead and the corners of eyes and mouth smooth out. Just briefly. Just a personal moment of acceptance, of relief, of Martin’s presence making his Atlas-esque burden a fraction lighter.

 _This_ shivering cluster is an absence of Jon; an empty office, an echoing Archives, Martin on his knees scrubbing blood from a carpet. Tim, who is there and not there, and even when he _is_ there, he…isn’t. Melanie, who formulates her own absences by disappearing into the work she still believes in. Elias, alone in his office. And Martin, who doesn’t know where anyone is, kneels penitent in Jon’s office, sponging blood into a bucket.

 _This_ cluster surges and swells like an upheave of nausea in the back of Martin’s throat, and it is Jon again. The pale skin of his throat is bisected by a sharp red smile, one of his hands is smothered in greying bandages, and there is pain-sweat at his temples, agony in his eyes, and he is _alive_. Innocent of murder. Returning to the Archives. And Martin will-

Wake, blinking up at his faded ceiling, the decades-old dusty corners and damp-stained patches, and the shriek of his alarm clock. The walls are white, and do not writhe. This is how he knows the world is real.

*

“You should take this,” Elias says, giving him the voucher. Martin squints at its garish colours and airy, whimsical font. They make him light-headed.

 _Harriet Fairchild_ , is the instructor who will be providing him with, “ _ONE FREE SKYDIVING LESSON, ON THE HOUSE!”_. The name chimes like a bell in Martin’s mind, distant and familiar.

“You’re sure?” he asks. There is another name on the voucher; it is very clearly not his own. He wonders if Jon is afraid of heights. If there is a reason he prefers to pass this invitation on. If they are so detached these days that Jon sends Elias to ask favours on his behalf.

“Martin,” Elias says. It is short, sharp, and cuts through Martin’s stammers like a heated knife. “I am going to be honest with you, and I need you to understand why I am asking this of you.”

 Stunned, Martin watches as Elias pulls up a chair next to his desk (it’s Tim’s chair technically, except that Tim never stops by anymore and it’s not like his name is on there or anything). It is perhaps the closest he’s ever been to Elias since his job interview; he feels no more at ease now than he did then.

Elias has no need to sink to anyone’s level. Elias towers, metaphorically when physically isn’t an option. Elias draws eyes and dominates discussions; not so much the elephant in the room as the panther at the board meeting. He certainly doesn’t pull up chairs and sit next to people. Martin sinks instinctively down into his seat. His shoulders hunch; he tries to be small.

Elias tells him about Mike Crew.

And then, Elias asks him to die.

“You understand, don’t you?” he says. His tone is all apology, regret, an ache of conscience; his eyes are the blank pages of an untarnished book, open and empty, awaiting the ink. There is nothing human in their expanse. “I think we can both agree that Jon is indispensable. And our master can’t afford to let hostilities fester among parties that might ally themselves with us. I can’t send Jon. The rest will not suit. Do you understand why I need you to do this?"

His voice is mellifluous, cajoling, plucking at Martin’s tendons like harp strings, coaxing obedient tune from one more obedient servant. Martin finds his head jerked into a nod; his mouth opens and his voice stammers agreement. Yes, he will go. Yes, he will fix Jon’s mistake, make it right again. No, he doesn’t want Jon to die, which will happen if he fails.

 _The worst part of it_ , Martin thinks, _is that he didn’t need to do that_.

There is a part of Martin, terrible and kind, that he has built up over time like an inward mausoleum. Its creed is painted on faded plaster walls: give others what they need, whether they know it or not; give up time and love and energy to fuel the ones that matter; give of yourself, so others may flourish. It’s a quiet place, an empty nest inevitably fled by the people he wants to claim, but has no claim to. It’s a graveyard of the good things he has given and can’t reclaim. It’s a loved and hated monument he calls _self-sacrifice_ , and its foundations are rooted in his bones, muscles, heart.

 _Jon will die,_ Martin repeats to himself, flushing hot and then abruptly cold, dizzier the longer he looks at the voucher. _Someone has to, and they want Jon. But they can’t have him._

He takes the voucher. Takes the half-day of paid leave Elias offers him, like a diseased and distasteful olive branch that wilts as he accepts it. Takes a touch to his shoulder and a muted, “Good man,” and the watchful silence that lingers as Elias leaves.

*

In Martin’s dreams, the walls are inching ever closer, like the ocean tide that creeps remorselessly up a long-suffering sandbank. He’s in the Archives. There are cabinets on the walls; the drawers will not open, though he tugs until his shoulders ache. There are bookshelves on the walls, shelved with stiff titles Martin can’t read. There are doors in the walls; they lead to other rooms, much like this one, and he has walked through a hundred of them already and not been sure if he ever left.

There are people on the next floor up. Their footsteps drum an uneven beat into the ceiling as they go about their day. Martin has tried going still, silent, and attempting to match people to their steps. Which is Tim, or Melanie, or Basira, or Elias? Which is Jon? He’s always seconds away, on the fleeting border of certainty, when the encroaching walls start cracking his ribs open.

Martin has tried calling for help. He can hear the footsteps; he’s sure they can hear him. But nobody comes. Nobody will; nobody ever has. He sits alone in his little back room as the walls constrict his lungs, and he will not be rescued.

His chest is tight for hours after he wakes.

*

“I’m taking a half-day,” Martin says. “Leaving early. Elias said I could.”

Jon looks up from his pile of papers. His eyes are unfocused; he blinks and seems to look right through Martin. “Right,” he says without inflection. And then, as he slips his mind back into his skin, “why are you telling me this?”

 _You mustn’t,_ Martin reminds himself. _He can’t know, he’d try to stop you._ He believes that so fervently. He has to. “Oh, just- just thought I’d let you know, is all. Tim knows to look for war statements, and Melanie can handle the research. Um. Yeah.”

“Fine.”

“I might not be back tomorrow,” Martin says desperately. He can already see the focus fade. He imagines Jon, wading in an ink-black pool, up to his neck in opaque and rippling water. Sinking down from view, out of Martin’s reach. It’s an image he wants to forget. “Or, or the day after. So I thought I might come and say…goodbye.”

Jon doesn’t look up. “ _Fine_ ,” he says, blank again. “Close the door when you leave.”

Martin does.

*

Mike Crew meets him in the aeroplane hangar. He’s short, dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit unzipped just far enough to flaunt the infamous scar. He has the coldest eyes Martin’s ever seen.

“You have some nerve,” he says quietly. He doesn’t sound angry. Matter-of-fact, more like, as if it doesn’t affect him in the slightest. His eyes are very pale. Blue then grey then fog-white as the light catches them, and Martin is abruptly very dizzy. He staggers. Clutches his head and tries to find the ground under his feet.

“It’s polite to introduce yourself when you meet a stranger,” Mike tells him. “You’re not the Archivist, which means I have no idea who you are.”

Martin looks up. He fell at some point; he didn’t feel it happen, but his knees are bruised, palms aching, and there’s a whistling in his ears that speaks of rushing air, a mighty fall. The kind you don’t walk away from.

“Martin,” he whispers. The words are snatched by wind. “I’m Martin Blackwood, I- Archival assistant. They sent me.”

“So I see.” From this angle, Mike towers like a skyscraper, too far up, dizzying to look on. “What’s your thing, then?”

“I…”

“Your _thing_ ,” Mike repeats slowly, and Martin shrinks away from the note of contempt. “I drop people from high places, your boss makes them tell stories. I’ve got a couple of friends who burn if they touch you. What do you do?”

Martin blinks up at Mike. Past him, at the grey of the hangar ceiling. He imagines he can see sunlight streaming in through cracks in the metal, except that isn’t possible. There are no cracks. If he’s blinded, it’s not by sun. His throat is utterly parched by the wind rushing down it. “I,” he rasps, “I make tea. Do research. That’s all, I just, I’m sorry.”

Mike inclines his head. “Sacrificial lamb, is it?” he says. “Sounds about right for your lot. Fine. Let’s get you off that floor and into a jumpsuit, yeah?”

“What?”

When Mike smiles, it has the effect of tilting the world sideways, and with a jerk Martin is face down on the ground, fingers scrabbling on concrete. He gets his knees under him. Pushes, and staggers to his feet. Mike offers a friendly hand to help keep him upright.

“Come on, then,” he says. “Harriet’s offered to pilot for us. You ready to fall?”

*

In Martin’s dreams, he is surrounded by strangers.

They wear the names of the people he knows, but they do it in the same way Martin might wear a borrowed raincoat on a rainy day, when Sasha had a cheap spare in her desk and Martin had nothing. Too tight in some places, flapping loose in others. Letting the rain drip steady down the back of his neck.

Tim and Melanie and Basira and Daisy are not the people he knows. They wear the names, but not the skins or voices. They are too bright, too loud, too cheerful. They take long lunches and return with over-stretched smiles, like plastic Halloween masks. They taste his terror and laugh in his face.

Jon is not the person he knows. He smiles when Martin brings him tea; his voice is lower, calmer, and he praises Martin in a way Martin longs for, has longed for, would long for if it were actually Jon. But it is not. This Jon reads statements in a bored tone, sans recorder. There is no power in his voice. He performs the act with a casual cruelty, pausing between sentences to smile at the room around him.

Elias is nowhere to be found. The walls are thinning.

He wakes and aches to call Jon, to text Tim or Basira, to email Melanie. To trek to the Archives and up to Elias’ office to make sure he’s still there. But it is dark outside, the streetlights shining like solitary stars, and his sheets smell of fear-sweat and helplessness.

Martin lies awake until dawn.

*

First time jumps are usually done in tandem, Mike tells him. Strapped to an instructor who will have the responsibility of pushing them both from the plane into the fall, of guiding the parachute, of landing them safely.

“In this case, it’s me,” he adds. “Not to worry, I’m qualified. Sort of.” There is no paperwork, no waiver, no written agreement; it doesn’t escape Martin’s notice that there is no physical evidence he was ever here at all. He supposes that must be intentional. Easier to hide the body. The only person who could say otherwise is Elias, and Elias…

Has rightfully prioritised Jon’s life over everything else.

Martin puts on the jumpsuit. Takes the harness and steps into it, holding still as Mike pulls straps and buckles until they pinch. He is businesslike, unnervingly pleasant. He offers apologies as Martin winces at the tightness.

“Be a shame if I dropped you, wouldn’t it?” he says. “I’d hate to think how long it would take to find the body. Or how you’d feel in those last few seconds as the ground rushed up to meet you.”

He pulls the strap across Martin’s chest until Martin can barely breathe, until he sucks air in shallowly and thinks of high altitudes, of his chest constricted by the onrushing sky. It is so clearly a threat; Martin knows he should be afraid, that it’s expected of him. But it’s not...the same. Not worms and half-eaten women at his door, not a monster that steals his friends and wears their names, not the long nights of abandonment in the bowels of an Archive that does not love him. Martin can’t muster fear. He looks down at the hands that fasten him into his harness and thinks that he doesn’t know the last time someone touched him for this long.

He wonders if there’s something wrong with him. As they make their ascent (ten thousand feet, an unimaginable height), he feels nothing.

At some point, Mike presses up against his back and straps their harnesses together. He says something in Martin’s ear. But the tiny plane is a deafening buzz around them and Martin is as good as deaf.

And then he is standing in an open doorway, the sky stretching out before him like a cinema screen from a front row seat, at once unreal and overwhelming.

“Nice meeting you,” Mike says; this time, Martin has no trouble hearing him.

“Wish I could say the same,” he replies and feels Mike’s chest convulse with laughter where it’s strapped against his spine.

And then they fall.

*

It is endless.

The onrush of air strikes Martin’s face like a punch, like a polar plunge into a winter river; it chills him senseless, billows his jumpsuit against his skin, tightens vice-like around his lungs. He can’t breathe. Can’t see. Through his goggles, the world becomes a bright blue blur, an unbroken expanse of colour that stretches out unending in all directions.

 _Like being underwater,_ Martin thinks, in the small part of himself that still can. _Except there’s no surface._ No ground; it vanished at some point between him leaving the plane and blinking in the face of the fall. Now he has nothing.

He’s afraid, of course. His stomach, flattened as it is against his spine, is tied into knots so tight he imagines they might never come undone; they might linger inside him until he can’t bear their presence and cuts them out instead. His mind is mostly occupied with screaming. _Falling_ , it tells him, high pitched and tinny. _Too fast, too far, you’re going to die_.

 _Yes,_ Martin agrees. _But we already knew that._

It really is like being underwater. Caught up in a raging river current that sweeps him onwards into rocks, or deeper straits, or falls. Sky, water, it doesn’t matter. Everything ends in a fall.

He wants to cry. He wants to be sick. He wants to scream.

He wants to stay.

The empty sky stretches wider than the edges of his mind; it hollows him out and fills him with clouds, and there is no pain. No gnawing pockmarks into his skin, no Archives walls to box him up, no monster to wear his name, no corridors or disappointment, no eye on every wall. It’s quiet here. Cold and clean. The skies will scour him blank.

Martin breathes, though it hurts his lungs to do. He wonders why he isn’t crying.

“Thank you,” he whispers. He can’t hear himself speak; the air steals his breath and his words, snatches them away like a kite without thread. But he can feel Mike stir behind him (has he always been there? For the longest time Martin could have sworn he was up here alone). If he replies, Martin can’t hear him.

Even the fear is gone now. He feels weightless, scraped clean and hollowed out, expanding for the air that breathes him. Empty and unafraid. He’s beyond that now; above it all. Nothing can hurt him here.

Martin blinks and the ground reappears, expanding up in front of him like an inflating balloon. It’s coming. He can’t stop it. He doesn’t care.

He falls until he doesn’t.

*

The field hasn’t been mown in a long time; sitting down, the grass rises almost to Martin’s shoulders.

He’s crying. He can’t seem to make it stop.

“What am I going to do with you?” Mike mutters. Martin inhales the sharp, cold scent of his skin. They’re not clipped together any longer, though he can’t remember when that happened. He thinks Mike might have fumbled them free as Martin leant into his shoulder, sky-blind and shaking. They haven’t moved since landing.

“Don’t kill Jon,” Martin chokes. “You can- you can hurt me, or kill me, or…anything. But Jon has to live. Please. He’s the only thing that matters.” It’s the one thought he can focus on. There will be others eventually; Martin feels them forming hazily in the blank blue corners of his mind, like shadows on a wall. He wonders what they’ll be. What form they’ll take. He wonders if he’ll ever think again.

Mike sighs into his hair. “See, though, now we have a problem. I have nothing against you personally; you’ve done nothing to me. You’re caught up in a squabble you didn’t ask to join. Worse still, you let the sky in.”

“Please don’t-”

“I’m not killing you,” Mike says. “It’s not worth the mess if I don’t especially want to do it anyway. And I don’t. You let it in, Martin. You’re touched. Not marked, but you could be. You want it. And, uh, it’d be pretty irresponsible of me to kill you if it wants you back.”

Martin’s heart is starting to slow, starting to even out, and the adrenaline hurricane in his veins is starting to settle. Like the quiet aftermath of the storm. He still feels blank. Struggles to form coherent thought, fails to understand what Mike is telling him. But he shifts his head and a new concern makes itself felt. “I’m sorry, I- I think I cried on your jumpsuit. Oh god, yes, I did. Sorry.”

Mike shrugs. “It’ll dry.”

“Right. Yeah. It’s just…I promise this isn’t something I usually do. You know. Break down and cry on people. Or- not people. Just, it’s been a bad- sorry.”

“Been having a rough time?” Mike asks. “Uh, sorry to hear it? Oh look, there’s some sympathy for you, I haven’t used that one in ages. Always nice to dust these things off every now and then. And I really wouldn’t worry about the crying if I were you, you handled everything a lot better than most. Can’t remember the last time I let someone land and they told me it was…what did you say? ‘Amazing’?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember landing.”

“No. I didn’t either, the first time. And after that it didn’t matter.”

“Is that when you became-”

“A monster,” Mike says easily. “There. Saved you the trouble.”

Martin knows monsters; they lurk in the darker corners of his dreams, and in the faded wasteland between wakefulness and sleep, writhing in silvery clusters that fog up his vision. Monsters take on the names and lives of the people he cares for, and he never notices, has to be told a year after the fact that he should have been grieving. Martin _knows_ monsters.

Mike is one of them. But he is far from the worst, and Martin doesn’t hate him for it.

Slowly, he extricates himself from the crook of Mike’s neck.

“You can’t kill Jon,” he says. “I just- I won’t let you do that. You have to kill me instead, okay, you just have to. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“No,” Mike says simply. “Come on, let’s get you back to the hangar. A bit of tea should warm you back up. We can talk about it there.” He helps Martin stand. He’s far stronger than he looks; doesn’t stagger under Martin’s helpless, stumbling weight.

They have tea together at the hangar, and then Mike sends him home.

*

Not all of Martin’s dreams are the bone-chilling visions of a young man with too many scars under his skin.

Sometimes in his dreams he sits jam-packed in a lecture hall, scribbling his wrist to aching, surrounded by people doing the same. His clothes are new and his notebook is fresh; his neighbours know his name. People pass him notes, send him texts to make plans, and he is _wanted_.

Sometimes, he sprints from his back-room confinement in the Archives, fire extinguisher brandished aloft like something steely and medieval. He’s not afraid. He storms down Jane Prentiss and her combed, crumbling skin and soaks her until she slumps dead at his feet, and her worms with her. Tim isn’t hurt. _Jon_ isn’t hurt. Martin will not let them call him a hero.

Sometimes, he pays a little more attention to the shifts in Sasha’s voice and face, her unfamiliar reflection. He hears, sees, understands; he traps the monster and brings his friend home safe. Those are the vaguest dreams. Even in the depths of fantasy, he can’t imagine a way to make it happen.

Sometimes, he comes to work and Tim is smiling, chatty. Melanie asks for his help with research, Basira tells him about the book she’s reading. Jon wants a cup of tea. Whatever they need, Martin can give them; it’s enough.

Sometimes, he goes to the little Institute staff lunches, pot-lucks packed with home baking and hastily bought supermarket biscuits, bowls of sweets and fruit platters. And when everyone leaves, he doesn’t need to talk to Rosie and her pitying expression, as she tells him once again that it’s _fine_ , she’s already packed up the leftovers, nobody minds if he has them. He doesn’t need anyone’s pity. He can take care of himself.

And he doesn’t need to write to his mother, because her phone privileges are not restricted and she’s not still locked up. He sees her as often as he wants instead of whenever she’s allowed visitors. She has a nice flat he helps her pay for; she’s not…sick, she’s doing her best, because she wants him to do the same. He’s worth trying for.

In Martin’s dreams, he is _enough_.

And then he wakes.

*

“Well this is unexpected,” Elias says. He stands over Martin’s desk; looms, or tries to, but it is difficult to fear what little height he can muster. Not after the sky, and the fall. “I had planned to wait a few days before clearing out your desk, but I suppose that won’t be necessary after all. Should I tell Jon to get started on his, instead?”

Martin feels a jolt of guilt, writhing worm-like in his intestines. “No,” he protests. “No, it’s- it’s not like that, I didn’t. Chicken out. I did what Mike said, I jumped, but it didn’t work out the way he wanted. It went wrong. And he said he wasn’t going to kill me after that. I’m sorry.”

He is stunned to see Elias close his eyes for a moment too long. He doesn’t quite flicker, but there is a gap, an instance in time in which the lines at the corner of his eyes seem so much more pronounced, his features a map of exhaustion. But then Martin blinks and the impression is gone.

“Too many statements,” Elias says quietly. “My fault, I suppose. I’ve gone and made you too observant. Too open to embracing experiences which would kill almost anyone else. That is…unfortunate. There’s not enough of Tim left to send, Basira and Melanie are too new at this. Daisy would suffice, if I didn’t worry she might just make things worse. And that just leaves Jon.”

Martin is shaking his head before Elias finishes the sentence. “No,” he insists. “I can fix it. I’m working on it, I swear, I...Mike said he was open to talking to me, he gave me his number. I’ll make him leave Jon alone. I can _do_ this, Elias, just let me try.”

 _I need this,_ he thinks, and he does, so much. Needs to not ruin this one thing in his life; needs to be enough, for once, to warm someone he cares for. It’s his chance to save a life and to be the least likely of heroes. He needs to do this. Even if it means falling.

“If you’re sure,” Elias says slowly. His expression is indecipherable; he watches Martin from a distance that stretches across worlds. He is, in that moment, not in the least bit human. “Well, it can’t hurt to try. And if you fail I suppose I could always make a plea to Simon Fairchild. I never have before, but there’s a first time for everything. I might do it, I suppose. For Jon’s sake.”

He’s gone before Martin can ask what he means.

*

“You just don’t strike me as angry,” Martin says. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t be, obviously you are, that’s fine. But you don’t _sound_ angry. Not at all like you want to kill someone.” His phone is pressing a bruise into the side of his face. He sits on his bed in T-Shirt and boxers, lights turned off. It’s one in the morning.

“I never _want_ to kill anyone,” Mike tells him. “I can, but it’s mostly necessity. They have something I need, or they’re in the way, or they’re fuel for the power that fuels me in turn. I don’t…wake up and decide I feel like killing someone. I know some that do, but I’m not one of them.”

“But you want to kill Jon.”

“Not especially.”

Martin hisses, frustrated, gripping his phone too tight. They’ve been having this same conversation for almost twenty minutes now. He isn’t getting anywhere. “Yes, okay, yes you do,” he snaps. “Because if you didn’t then I wouldn’t _be_ here, begging you not to, instead of asleep, which I should be because I have to get up at five.”

“So go and sleep,” Mike says. “Don’t let me keep you.”

“I can’t until you explain.”

“Okay, uh. What am I explaining?”

“You’re doing this on purpose, I- fine,” Martin says. “Fine, okay, let’s try this again. If you don’t want to kill Jon, why are you going to do it?”

Mike gives a patient sigh. “Look, it’s, er, sort of a reputation thing. Kind of hard to explain to someone who’s still people, you know? What your Archivist did was rude. I let him onto my territory, didn’t threaten him at all, and he compelled me without my consent. Then he brought in a whole other power, knocked me out, tried to shoot me, and _buried me alive_. Can we…are we on the same page here? That’s rude.”

“Daisy wasn’t his fault,” Martin protests. “She was going to do the same to him until he got rescued.”

“Intentions aside, I can’t have it get around that I just let your lot get away with it,” Mike says. “Reputation. It counts for more than you know. There have to be consequences, and that’s why I’m killing your Archivist. Nothing personal, not something I feel strongly about. It’s just about making things balance.”

He sounds so logical about it. As if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“You’re right,” Martin says quietly. “I don’t understand. Not at all.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Are you sure you can’t just kill me instead?”

“Good _night_ , Martin,” Mike says. “Talk to you another time, you should sleep.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“Sweet dreams and all that.” Mike hangs up.

Martin’s curtains are open. Beyond the blackened silhouette of the building next door, he can just make out a sliver of skyline. Stars, winking as if at a joke he doesn’t understand. They seem so much more distant than usual.

*

In Martin’s dreams, he is the Archivist. Jon is dead.

There are eyes in the walls. He sees them blink when he turns his head, sees iris and pupil tilt to follow his every move. Sees them narrow when he speaks, reads, breathes. His statements are thin, pathetic things that waver like ghosts in a world that seems far too solid. He can’t bring them to life like he used to. Maybe he never could.

He tries so hard. Day by day, extending long past sunset, sitting at his desk with his words and his tapes, mouth sour with the taste of other people’s terror. He hasn’t gone home in a long time. He wouldn’t know how to find it anymore.

He is the Archivist. He is useless. And one of the these days, he will be dead. Just as soon as Elias can find someone to do the work better.

But Jon is not so easily replaced.

Martin wakes up to a pillow that sticks damply to his cheek and eyelashes, to a silent flat and a heart full of absence. His phone tells him that it’s just after four in the morning. Most people would be asleep right now. Not that there are many people he could justify calling, this deep into a crisis.

Mike answers on the fourth ring; Martin is counting.

“Hi again.”

He sounds his usual self, friendliness and pleasantry measured out by the ounce and carefully folded together. A pre-prepared, artificial personality. A mask for a thing with no face. Desperate for distraction, Martin finds himself unable to care.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” he asks. “Are you just above all that now or what?”

“No, uh, I definitely sleep,” Mike says, amused. “Just keep different schedules depending. I have a day off tomorrow- or is it today, now?- and I felt like staying up to watch the stars. Maybe the dawn too, see how I feel. What’s your excuse?”

“Bad dreams.”

“Er…‘Sorry to hear it’, I guess.”

“Sympathy?”

“Mhm,” Mike agrees. “I’m getting good at it these days, I sound almost convincing. You want to tell me about your nightmares? I have a full mug of tea and a sky full of stars, I’m ready to fake person for you. What’s up?”

 _I’m tired of waking up with a wet pillow_ , Martin thinks. _Tired of the dreams and the waiting and the fear. I feel like I’ve been worn so thin I’m turning transparent, and the only time I’ve been real recently is when you dropped me out of a plane._

But these are small, petty problems. _Martin_ problems. There are so many worse things to worry about in the world.

“I dreamed Jon was dead,” he says. “Again. They made me Archivist and I couldn’t do any of it, and…everyone knew I was a fraud.”

“Hmm, yeah, not surprising,” Mike says. “No offense meant. You’re just not my idea of an Archivist. I think it’s the freckles, but what do I know?”

“I can’t work out why Elias sent me to try and talk you down,” Martin says. And maybe it’s a product of the time, the exhaustion, the dreamy almost-morning silence to the outside sky; for a brief, guilty moment, Martin feels bitter. Bitter at the sacrifice being demanded of him. Bitter that he was deemed least valuable, most easily replaced. Bitter at not being enough. _It should have been Tim_ , he thinks. _Tim’s barely even a person anymore. He wouldn’t have cared._

He’s immediately horrified at himself. Knows he doesn’t mean it; hates that the thought even occurred.

“It’s probably because you’re not fully marked,” Mike is telling him. Martin tries to pay attention. “I mean, yeah, the Eye has a claim on you, and it’s obvious you’ve been feeding it, but you’re not properly given over. It’s like…a shadow, a bruise under your skin. It wants you, but you’re still up for grabs. There’s a lot of things out there who take that as a challenge. You’re still basically untouched.”

The word resonates with something inside Martin’s skull. Inside his chest, which recoils, winds in on itself and tries to hide behind his ribcage. Full of foresight, maybe; once the thought occurs, he can’t make it go away.

 _Huh_ , he thinks. _Untouched. It’s funny because Tim would say that sounds just like-_

_Oh._

_Well. There’s the answer then._

“So…touch me,” Martin says quietly. His lungs seem to grow tighter, tenser with every word. “If- if you have to take something, and it can’t be replaced, you could…I’ve never.”

“Never what?” Mike says; there is the rarest thread of humour in his tone, as brief as a summer breeze. Martin clings to it. Wonders if it’s genuine or an act of mummery for his own benefit. Does it matter, if it chills him either way?

“Please,” Martin says. “I need to make this right but there’s nothing else I can give you. You won’t kill me, and I can’t…feed your god. I only have one thing left that I value, and maybe it doesn’t mean much to you, but it would cost me to lose it. Isn’t that what you want?”

There is a moment of silence. He hears Mike sigh.

“You’re really set on rescuing your Archivist, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Even though you’re not at fault here.”

“Look, I know you probably don’t care-”

“I don’t,” Mike says. “Sex, intimacy, those are things I surrendered to the unending fall. I don’t know if I regretted it at the time; might have done, but I didn’t understand back then. Sort of like how you don’t understand now. What you’re offering, it’s meaningless.”

“You said you didn’t _want_ to kill people,” Martin retorts. The lack of response buoys him; he forces himself further down the only road he can see. There is ice in his veins, a weakness in his bones and muscles, a resignation that makes him want to put the phone down and cry. He ignores it all. It doesn’t matter. “But you’re going to kill Jon anyway because you feel like there’s some sort of balance you need to restore. You need to hurt someone to make up for him hurting you. So it’s not really about what you want, and more about taking something important so you feel balanced again. And this- this is important to me.”

Mike is quiet. And then he is not. “It would be so much easier just to kill you,” he says. “But I’d still rather not. I’ll think it over, how about that?”

“It’s a fair deal,” Martin says. “Jon didn’t kill you. He…he _hurt_ you, he embarrassed you, he buried you and made you,” _dirty,_ he thinks, closing his eyes. “It’s fair,” he says dully. “Please just say yes.”

“I said I’d think about it. Don’t push me.” Mike hangs up before Martin can say anything else.

*

A few hours later, Mike agrees. Martin stares down at the text, the invitation, _come over tonight if you’re free. Here’s my address._ He tries to breathe. Digs down deep for relief and comes up empty.

Instead, he drops his phone and goes to the bathroom to throw up.

*

“Can I get you something first?” Mike asks. “Tea, coffee? Something stronger?”

Martin considers it. “No,” he decides. “Thanks, but. I think I’d rather just get it over with.” He wonders if he should apologise for the phrasing; it does seem rude, seems ungrateful given that Mike didn’t have to agree, and the alternatives are so much worse. Should he dredge up enthusiasm? Fake it like in the videos he’s spent the afternoon watching, flinching away from, forcing himself back to?

Mike is openly unconcerned. “Suit yourself. Bedroom’s this way.”

It’s strange, stripping in front of a relative stranger. Always uncomfortable. Martin turns his back as he does it ( _why?_ he wonders. _It doesn’t matter, he’ll see it all anyway_ ). He stops with his hands on the waistband of his briefs. Paralysed, light-headed with fear. They can stay on for now, he decides. When Mike wants them off, he can remove them himself. Nobody said Martin had to do all the work for him.

He keeps his eyes firmly up, staring fixedly at the wall behind the headboard as he is unceremoniously beckoned to sit in Mike’s lap. And he tries to sit back, to rest his weight on Mike’s thighs, not to get too close. Only one of them has an issue with nudity, it seems. Mike is openly unconcerned.

“Right,” Martin says. He’s trying for brisk, businesslike, careless bravado. He misses that target completely. “What- how. Um. How do you want to?”

They’ve left the bedroom light on; its glow adds a touch of colour to Mike’s pale eyes. It does nothing to warm them. “I’m not fucking you,” he says casually. If he feels the sag of instinctive relief in Martin’s frame, he doesn’t react to it. His hands rest in the small of Martin’s back; noncommittal, unobtrusive. His skin is very cold. “Not tonight. I thought about it, but on the whole I’d rather not. So, er, suppose we start off with hands.”

For a moment Martin wonders if he’s heard things right. “Just- just that?”

“This time, yeah,” Mike says. “Look, it’s been a while for me, and never for you. Doesn’t seem right to just rush into things.”

“But you said-”

“Not much,” Mike points out. “But you, you’re not really in a place to argue, are you? So we’re doing things my way. If you want out already, you know where the door is; makes no difference to me. Feel free to leave.”

“I can’t,” Martin says. “You know I can’t.” He shifts his weight, uncertain, wondering what the etiquette is for sitting in a naked man’s lap when, really, they hardly know each other. Although given the agreement they’ve come to, _not knowing each other_ isn’t going to be a problem for long. There is a part of him that wants to laugh at that. The same small, daring part that laughs at Tim’s sex jokes and innuendo, that finds the whole situation to be a special kind of hysterical.

 _Tim does this all the time,_ Martin thinks. _Sex with strangers. Just another Friday evening._ He can’t bring himself to make eye contact any longer, but looking down means he’s drawn to the scar instead. The seared-in spirals, sealed with heat and light, pale against Mike’s skin like white smoke trailed by an aeroplane. It’s so hard not to stare. But he’s heard the statements; he knows it’s a bad idea to look too long.

Instead, he lifts his head and kisses Mike.

The dizziness strikes like a hammer to his stomach. A ripple in his stomach, a drop like the surge from the highest point of a roller coaster. He hasn’t moved; clings with his elbows on Mike’s shoulders, hands crossed behind his neck. He still feels the chill of Mike’s skin, cannot tear his mind away from the subtle press of Mike’s cock against one of his inner thighs. But his body hasn’t realised. His body is falling.

Mike kisses back, and though it is plain neither of them knows how they should be doing it, he has the advantage of…not caring. His breath, his lips, his tongue are cold; he tastes of sky. Tastes of the air Martin swears is rushing past him, roaring loud in his ears. The icy snap of snowfall, the ozone of incoming rain. Martin clings. Pushes up against him, riding the fall, realising too late that the serpentine twisting in his stomach isn’t vertigo, and he’s rubbing himself off against Mike’s stomach.

 _Oh,_ he thinks. Wonders if he should apologise. But talking isn’t an option; the air has been pulled from his protesting lungs, torn free like a leaf in a hurricane. Not that it matters. An apology can’t be necessary, with Mike growing hard between his thighs, pressing up against the cotton of his briefs.

Crushed by the gravitational force that can’t exist, Martin is held down against Mike’s lap. Struggling to move; he’s supposed to, he knows that much, and he needs to get this right, but it’s- he can’t work out how to do it. He wriggles, clumsy, grinding down on the solid press of Mike’s cock. Surprised as they both shudder.

 _Okay,_ Martin thinks, _okay, that’s, that’s not bad, that’s really nice, I can do that_. He adjusts, lines the length of Mike’s cock up against his own and tries to rock against it. The cotton briefs are growing steadily more annoying, sticking damply his skin, sliding wrong against Mike’s. Martin gives a breathless, frustrated moan. The rushing wind cards through his hair. He struggles to work out which way is up, down, what is sky and what is ground. Pulls a hand free of Mike’s shoulder and tries to drop it between them.

His fingers brush the lightning scar. He yanks back as it burns him.

“Sorry,” Mike says. His cheeks are flushed, eyes still too pale, and there is a wet shine to his lips, the slick of Martin’s saliva. Martin is briefly captivated. “Instinct. You can touch if you want, I don’t mind.”

The direction is welcome, and the burn is not what Martin feared; his hands have grown cold from the cold of Mike’s skin, but the scar itself is warming. He touches. Traces the spiralling ripples with fingers that shake. His chest is tight but he can hear himself breathing in ragged little gasps as the scar stings him gently. There don’t seem to be any edges to it. It is as boundless as the sky that stretches around him.

One of Mike’s hands finds its way between his legs. Cups him through his briefs, tugs up his length, presses a palm against the tip of his cock. Martin writhes up against it. Mike’s thumb teases his slit through the cotton, rubbing against the telltale wet spot. Somewhere under the vertigo, he feels a rush of embarrassment.

“What’s getting you off?” Mike asks. He sounds so calm as he slips his hand under the waistband of Martin’s briefs, pushing them down to the base of his cock. “Is it the naked guy or the falling?”

“Both, I think,” Martin manages. “I’m sorry, I,” he’s growing painfully lightheaded. Dizzy enough to buck into Mike’s cold grip where it wraps around him and moves in measured strokes.

“Not to be demanding or anything,” Mike says, “but it’s generally good manners to return the favour? You know, if you feel up to it. Or, er, I could get you off first, if you want to enjoy the fall, and then we can switch. I really don’t have a preference.” He tightens his grip as it reaches the head of Martin’s cock, a little extra friction against his foreskin. Martin makes a desperate sound. He reaches between them and wraps a clumsy hand around Mike.

It’s different when it’s someone else. The angle is odd, he has to move in new ways. He doesn’t know if Mike likes it slower, faster, if he likes his balls played with like Martin does (he doesn’t dare ask). He can barely form words through the vertigo assailing him, the sense that the sky is sucking him in, swallowing him up, emptying him out.

He lets it take him. Pushes up into Mike’s hand and lets the world rush past.

*

“Is the shaking thing normal?” Mike asks afterwards. “It’s just, er, you’re doing a lot of it.”

They’re stretched out on the bed, still naked. A cursory effort at cleanup was made; Martin did very little to help. “Sorry,” he says blankly. “Sorry, it’ll stop soon, I think-”

“Cold?”

 _Inside and out_ , Martin thinks, but it seems so rude to say so. He wishes he could bring himself to meet Mike’s eyes. “Yeah,” he says instead. “A little. Um.”

“Hang on, I’ll get you a blanket,” Mike says. “Or-wait, right. Cuddling. Forgot that was a thing people do, sorry. Come here.”

His skin is as cold as the air, raising goose bumps up Martin’s arms as Mike wraps around him in a way that suggests he’s unfamiliar with the concept. But there is a blanket too; Martin hugs it tight around his shoulders. Leans back into Mike’s chest and realises his mistake. Mike is only mostly cold. His scar, though; it throws heat like a flickering winter fireplace, like the lingering afterimage of a flashed white light, like the half-life death after a nuclear bomb.

The lightning has never left Mike. It’s still there, still hot in the trenches it carved through him, and as Martin feels it seep through his back he wonders if he has been contaminated. If the Archives will want him back, now there is lightning in him. Now he is touched by the storm.

He closes his eyes.

“We can call it off here, if you want,” Mike says. He is quiet as usual, calm and noncommittal. His breath is cold on the back of Martin’s neck. “I’m not going to stop you from backing out. It’s fine. We’ll call it quits and I’ll settle for a bit of maiming instead of outright killing your boss. How does that sound?”

Impossible. It sounds impossible. “No,” Martin says. “Thanks, but…I agreed. And you agreed. And I don’t want Jon hurt at all, it’s not- It’s all or nothing, I guess.”

“Suit yourself.”

They lie together for a while. Eventually, Martin stops shivering. Mike asks him if he’d like to stay the night. There is no inflection in the offer; he doesn’t care either way. His arms wrap around Martin’s ribs and they don’t move; he’s like a mannequin, arranged into a pleasing shape, lifeless to touch. He doesn’t run his hands over Martin’s chest or stomach. Doesn’t pull him closer, or kiss the back of his neck. If he ever knew how to properly hold someone, he’s long since forgotten.

Or maybe that’s just how it is outside of movies. Maybe people really are this cold, this detached, this absent. Maybe that’s the secret Martin’s been missing: the thing he craves does not exist in this world.

“My arm’s gone dead,” Mike says in a conversational tone. “And you don’t strike me as particularly enthused, so, uh. Guess I’m doing something wrong here.”

“I don’t know,” Martin admits tiredly. “It’s a bit….lifeless? Sort of instruction manual, tab A, slot B, it’s not. Um. It’s not.”

“Human?” Mike suggests.

“Real. Like you actually mean it. And that’s, that’s fine, I know you don’t actually, so it’s okay.”

Mike exhales cold air against his neck. He is quiet, considering. And then he pulls his arm free from under the crush of Martin’s ribcage.

“Right,” he says in a tone Martin can only interpret as brisk. “See, but, that does strike me as a bit rude. It’s an etiquette thing, isn’t it?”

“Um.”

“Show me how you’d do it,” Mike says. “Might take me a few tries but I’ll get there.”

Hesitant at first, Martin rearranges them. He’s shy about it, waiting for reproach. But none is forthcoming and he finds himself pushing a little, asking for touch and movement and the closest Mike can simulate to affection.

They’re not very good at it. But they do try. It makes a difference.

*

In Martin’s dreams, Elias stands over his desk, judgement present in the stiff line of his perfect posture, impatience on his face.

“Martin,” he says. “We’re running out of time. Have you solved the problem or not?” He’s difficult to look at. He blurs like the text of a thousand books, black type-written letters swirling at random through the threads of his suit and the pores of his skin. Martin tries to focus. It’s a storm, a maelstrom of incoherence, of jumbled words. Questions, answers, mysteries, statements. And, for the briefest of moments, he finds lucidity, a single legible word implanted deep in the skin of Elias’ throat.

_Jon._

It hurts to see.

“We made a deal,” Martin manages. “I…made him agree. We’re trading something, um, we…agreed.”

“I know what you agreed on,” Elias says. “The details don’t interest me nearly as much as the outcome. Can you go through with this?”

Elias’ voice is low; it echoes oddly, overlapping at the edges. Like a hundred hushed whispers under the roof of an ancient library. His skin is paper-pale, the veins in his wrist are an inky, unreal blue. He has too many eyes.

“Yes,” Martin tells the creature that is not Elias. That cannot possibly be anyone else. “I can do it, I told you I would.”

“And you’ll spend the rest of your life aching over the loss,” Elias comments. “Not that you have much of a lifespan to look forward to, so I suppose it hardly matters. Fine. If you’re certain you have this under control, I’ll hold off on talking to Simon Fairchild. Good. And Martin?”

“Um. Yes?”

“Don’t sleep on the job,” Elias says. “I understand you had something of a long night, but that’s no excuse for slacking. Jon asked you for statements dealing with war. Shouldn’t you be finding them?” He vanishes in a flicker, flutters from existence with a sound like the thrum of an owl’s wings in flight, like the leafing of a thousand pages in a book with no name. Martin wakes up.

He’s alone at his desk, head on his arms where he gave up the fight against exhaustion.

 _War statements,_ he thinks blearily. _Right. Can do._ He tries to ignore the eyes on the back of his neck. Pushes at the statements piled high on his desk. It’s cold in the Archives. This is nothing new, but Martin finds himself thinking instead of the chill in Mike’s skin, the weight of his hands on Martin’s ribs and thighs. His stomach lurches; phantom vertigo.

Martin pushes his chair back, standing. He makes for the statements Jon has already recorded and filed, running his fingers over folders until the right one finds him. This, he takes back to his desk.

The war statements can wait. Martin spends the afternoon with headphones pinching his ears, listening again and again to a story about a man and his brother, and a ladder leading off the edge of a skyscraper in Paris.

*

Martin is dreaming.

Paris stretches out before him. The Eiffel Tower is black and skeletal against the backdrop; the streets cut canyons between the walls of buildings. It is a long way down. There’s a ladder.

“I’m not actually scared of heights, you know,” Martin says. He approaches the edge. There should be a barrier, would be if this was real, but Martin’s getting very good at telling dreams from reality, and he trusts the sky not to drop him. He peers down at the city below. Small, crawling ant-like with miniscule vehicles. The level of detail is astounding. “Heights are fine. It’s small, enclosed spaces that get to me.”

“Don’t just _say_ that.” Mike comes to stand at his side, white shirt billowing in the sudden breeze. The scar is stark and unmistakable. “Seriously. It’s no wonder your Archivist is out there getting chunks taken out of him, if he’s as badly prepared as you are.”

“We didn’t have anyone to prepare us, we’re…learning on the job, I guess.”

“So I see,” Mike says. He doesn’t look impressed. “Well here’s a lesson on the house: don’t just wander around blithely admitting to the things that terrify you. Never know what might be listening. Don’t give your enemies any more ammunition than they already have.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“I, er, sort of assumed it was common sense,” Mike says. “Apparently not. My mistake.”

“Oh, thanks very much.” Martin sinks down to sit on the edge of the viewing platform. His legs dangle from the skyscraper’s lip, impossibly high. He kicks idly at the air; wonders when his shoes appeared, though he knows he wasn’t wearing them when he passed out in his bed. Wonders what would happen if he undid the laces and let them fall. How long they’d take to make landing.

“Tempting, isn’t it?” Mike says. “The call of the sky. The little voice in your head that wants you to…fall.”

“Not really,” Martin tells him honestly. “I was thinking about dropping my shoes. Timing how long they…yeah, alright, don’t look at me like that, I wouldn’t _actually_. What if I hit someone?”

“I’m not going to dignify any of that with an answer,” Mike says. “And seeing as you’re not the Archivist, you can’t force one out of me. I like that about you. Makes you infinitely less irritating, for starters. Even if you are a bit daft.”

“That’s not kind.”

“You can have kind or honest,” Mike says. “But not both. Which would you prefer?” He seems genuinely interested in the answer. Martin peers up at him through the glare of sunlight that whites out his vision. Even from this angle, the scar shines against his skin, plasticky gleaming. Martin tries not to look too long.

“I’m not sure,” he says, turning away to stare out at the city below him. “Everyone at the Archives either lies or doesn’t tell me things. But then, they’re also not that kind, really. So I suppose either one would make a nice change from the usual. Take your pick.”

“I could _try_ for a mix of both,” Mike offers. “Gentle honesty, how’s that? Not sure I can pull it off, but stranger things have happened.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble.”

“If we’re being…gently honest,” Martin says, “could you tell me what I’m doing here? Not that I’m complaining, the view is something else. Pure poetry. But I have a feeling you didn’t bring me here for that.”

“Perceptive of you.” Mike sits down at his side. Leans back on his hands, the picture of relaxation. His neck is raggedly bisected by the white scar tissue. “I was sort of thinking about making you climb down.” He indicates the ladder.

It doesn’t look very sturdy. Martin’s almost certain he sees it sway. “If I get a say in this, I’d really rather not? But if my opinion doesn’t matter then I suppose I’d better get climbing.”

“I was also thinking about fucking you up here,” Mike says. As if it’s the simplest thing in the world; as if they’re discussing the weather. Martin’s hands tighten on the edge of the building. He looks away.

“Oh. Um. Were you?”

“Yeah,” Mike says. “I mean, you’re completely in my power up here. I could turn you into a sweet, well-meaning puppet-” he waves a hand. “-Like that.”

Martin tries to move. Tries to lift a hand, lift a finger, to blink in the face of the wind that makes his eyes water. Tries to breathe. There is a sudden absence of sound, a cessation of something constant, and he realises too late that his heart has stopped. Everything has stopped. His eyes are frozen, staring out at the Parisian skyline, the clouds and the rooftops and the Eiffel Tower, and his heart is no longer beating.

He doesn’t feel any different. He just can’t move.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Mike says. “Couldn’t do it outside of your mind, of course, but it was very good of you to invite me in. And, I mean, I could do anything to you like this. Could push you right off the edge.” He rests a hand on Martin’s back and presses gently. “Or I could pull you back. Do away with the floor and have you on your stomach, so you could enjoy the view while I enjoyed _you_. You’d probably like that. You have this, er, this air about you. Like you need looking after. Which isn’t normally my kind of thing, but I don’t mind it so much with you. You’re not pushy about it. You take what’s given to you.”

He pulls Martin back from the edge. Arranges him, unmoving, on his back. Martin sees sky. The unbroken blue that paints his vision, sinks in through his pores and starts to fill the inside of his mind. He isn’t falling; it’s not that, not quite. He’s just…stranded. Frozen, helpless, as the blue starts to lap at the edges of his self.

It’s very peaceful.

“Still not scared,” Mike comments. “Good for you. Want to see something interesting?”

The sky inverts; there’s no other word for it Martin watches as the city and sky rotate around him, like spinning a globe of the world. He stares up. He stares at the city. The glass viewing platform is hard under his back, and he stares up into the air and sees…Paris.

He thinks that his breath would catch, if he was still breathing.

Mike leans over him, and for a moment Martin thinks he’s about to be kissed. He aches to incline his head. To lean into it. But the choice isn’t his to make.

“Enjoy the view,” Mike says; his lips are inches from Martin’s, and then he is gone. His hands move to Martin’s waist, unbuckling his belt, pulling his trousers and briefs down to mid-thigh. He blows chill air onto the tip of Martin’s cock. Lowers his mouth to it, his tongue flicking across Martin’s slit. And it turns out there is one part of Martin’s body that’s still capable of movement.

Mike’s mouth is as cold as the rest of him, but Martin finds he doesn’t care too much. He stares at the city above. There’s nothing else he can do.

*

He calls Mike when he wakes up. The sky outside is black as pitch, cloud obscuring the stars. It could be any time at all.

“That was you, wasn’t it?” Martin asks before Mike can say anything. “That dream I just had, that wasn’t…normal. You did that.”

“Might have done,” Mike says pleasantly. “I wasn’t sure if it would work for you, but there we go. You seemed quite keen on the whole thing.”

“I mean, yeah. It was _Paris_.”

“Funny that’s the thing you fixate on. Favourite place of yours?”

“I’ve never been,” Martin admits. “I’d love to go. Just…god, imagine that. Paris. I’d sit in a café for hours, soaking it all in. Wouldn’t know where to start. Did you- did you like it?”

“No idea,” Mike says. “Don’t really remember it, to be honest with you.”

“How can you not remember Paris?”

“It’s harder these days. There’s the hunt, the chase, the rush when they fall. Everything else is minor detail, and after a while it all starts to blur. My passport says I’ve been to Paris. I’ll take its word for it. Think it also says I’ve been to Dubai and Tianjin. Not sure why. They didn’t make an impression, either way.”

“You have to stop and notice these things,” Martin says. “Did you- no, I bet you didn’t even bother visiting the Louvre. D’you know, apparently the Mona Lisa’s actually really small? Tim got to see her for a school trip, he said she wasn’t worth the bother. But I’m pretty sure he wasn’t really looking either. You can’t just…rush through with your head somewhere else. You have to stop and really focus.”

“Fair enough. You can come with, next time I’m over there.”

“You- what?”

“Mhm. Might appreciate it more if you’re there to point out what I should be appreciating. And if I don’t, at least I’ll appreciate _you_ enjoying it.”

“Wow,” Martin says. He’s on his back, staring up at his dingy ceiling. Still riding the high of the skyscraper, the memory of Mike’s hands, his mouth, his too-pale eyes. Of the city in the sky. “I mean, I’d love that, I’d…I really would. Wow.” He stammers himself incoherent, while Mike laughs softly into his ear, and eventually reminds him that he has to work in the morning.

“Sweet dreams,” he adds with malice, and hangs up on Martin’s hysterical giggle.

*

They’re starting to form habits. They meet several times a week, and the horror is fading like light at sunset. Martin goes to work. Martin goes home. Martin goes back out to see Mike, or sometimes just calls him. They have a lot to talk about; Martin’s monsters are Mike’s acquaintances, their lives so dissimilar as to provide constant fascination. Mike can talk demonology for hours. Shyly, Martin starts to talk poetry. Neither of them really understands the other’s topic, but it’s fun all the same.

He is, technically, still quite “untouched”. Mike doesn’t seem in any hurry to settle their bargain.

They do mess around. Martin’s dreams are broken up by towers, skyscrapers, clifftops and aeroplanes. He flies, he falls, he kneels on the edge of oblivion and sucks Mike off while the wind combs his hair like fingers.

They meet after work on rainy days. Martin starts it. He sees the clouds, sees greying horizons and thinks, _I want to be with Mike right now_. They get beers and pizza in pubs while the rain outside drums on pavements and rooftops, and soaks them as they run for cover. He doesn’t know if Mike cares; he’s ever agreeable, always responsive to Martin’s suggestions. If he finds it odd that Martin calls him when the clouds start coalescing, he doesn’t say. Maybe he doesn’t notice.

There’s a thunderstorm one Saturday afternoon. They weather it at Mike’s place with tea and chocolate biscuits, and then they fool around under the covers a bit. It’s nice; comfortable, for reasons Martin can’t describe. He’s being indulged, he thinks. In the same way that Mike indulges his tentative attentions to the infamous scar, which he himself hates, and Martin can’t keep from touching. In the same way that he indulges Martin’s hesitant pushes for physical contact. Knees pressed together under tables, fingers touching in the street. Holding each other in bed.

Thunder rattles the windows. Languid, happy, Martin tucks his head under Mike’s chin. He likes doing that. Standing, he’s the taller one, looming gangly over Mike’s compressed intensity. And that’s fine; they are what they are. But there’s something to making himself smaller, less noticeable. A frail sense of safety he can’t begin to quantify.

He feels Mike’s cock pressing into one of his thighs. Softening, still warmer than usual. It’ll cool like the rest of him soon enough; Martin reaches down to cup it in a shy hand. Mike shivers.

“You’re, uh, going to have to wait a bit before we can have another go.”

“I know,” Martin says. “I just…want to touch you. Is that weird?”

“You’re asking me?”

Martin doesn’t know how to answer. He runs his fingers down the length of Mike’s cock, plays with the foreskin, rubs his thumb over the silky head; finds a lingering wetness that he thinks about bringing to his mouth, before deciding otherwise. Instead, he takes Mike’s balls in his palm, weighing them gently. Cooler than expected; so much of Mike is cold, like the sky above the clouds, like the winter wind that bites its way through layers of clothing. He’s so close to being human. And so far away.

Mike watches him with pale, empty eyes, his expression patient.

“Having fun?” he asks.

Martin moves a hand to his thigh, to the soft hairs he ruffles in the wrong direction. “I’ve never touched anyone like this,” he admits. “It’s weird, like, maybe I’m not allowed?”

“I don’t mind.”

“I know. But it still feels like I shouldn’t. Except I am anyway, and I kind of like it? If that makes sense.”

“None whatsoever,” Mike says. But he lies still and placid as Martin explores the muscles of his thighs, the curve of his arse, the small of his back. Counts his ribs, slipping fingers into the spaces between them. The Lichtenberg scar is there, as it always is, hot and white and unmistakable. Martin doesn’t care. He wants the rest of this man-like creature, whose skin is as cold as his eyes, and who mumbles, “D’you mind?” as Martin accidentally tickles him.

“You’re beautiful,” Martin decides eventually. “You really are.”

Mike doesn’t roll his eyes. Doesn’t smirk or shrug it off, or laugh in Martin’s face. “‘So are you’,” he says. “Is that the right answer?”

“I don’t know,” Martin admits. “It’s probably not true. I’m a bit gangly. Also, pasty. And the freckles.”

“I like those.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. “They’re good, they suit you. Do you want to try the cuddling thing again? I think I’m improving, but it’s hard to tell.”

“Only one way to find out.”

He is improving. It helps.

*

They do things together. Take walks, go to restaurants, send each other pictures of weird-looking birds. They go to places Martin wouldn’t have gone to alone; see shows and exhibitions he’d have been too shy to attend (but would have done his research online and lied to his mother about seeing). They are, to all intents are purposes, playing at being a couple.

He still feels a sense of indulgence in Mike’s willingness to indulge him. A gap, a line that separates them, that means Mike never quite understands why Martin likes these things. But he never complains. Never refuses. Sometimes he even seems to enjoy them.

Martin thinks he might be happy.

*

“-So that’s why I hate worms,” Martin says. “And I have nightmares about them still, all the time. I wish they’d stop.” It’s sometime after midnight. He hasn’t checked the time. The little patch of sky outside his window is deep blue and starry; the air is cold. He’s started sleeping with his window open. It feels…more free. Safer. Not as alone.

He’s still bleary, sweaty, fragments of horror clinging to the edges of his mind like strands of silk. He can’t shake them off yet. The dream was a bad one.

On the phone, Mike is patient. “Yeah, I heard something about that one. Attack on your Archives, that sort of thing. Didn’t know you’d been singled out, though.”

“Thirteen days.”

“So you said. Surprised no one came looking for you, actually.”

“Yes, um,” Martin says. “So was I, a bit. I mean, I’m glad, I guess? Because she would have hurt them. But obviously Elias knew, he could have gotten someone to come down with…fire extinguishers or whatever. Or my neighbours could have noticed that I wasn’t going to work anymore, and my power was off. Someone could have noticed. But they didn’t. It’s just, that hurts? A little? It just really makes you think.” He feels guilty for admitting it. There were reasons his absence wasn’t noted; he can’t, he mustn’t blame Jon, who believed Martin’s texts and had no reason to worry about him. Mustn’t blame Tim or Sasha, or…anyone.

Still. Thirteen days.

“Well, just so you know,” Mike says. “I’d come looking. You’d probably be stuck in there for a few days, uh, just in case you wanted a bit of peace and quiet. But I’d definitely stop by to check on you.”

“Oh,” Martin says. He grips the phone, presses it tight to his ear. Feels inexplicably warmer. “Oh no, don’t do that, I mean, Prentiss would have hurt you.”

“Interesting fact: most things don’t enjoy getting dropped from a very high place to splatter their entrails across the unforgiving ground. Worms, people, not much difference.”

Martin smiles up at the ceiling. He breathes slow and deep, feels the sharp, anxious edges inside him start to peel away and scatter like dead leaves. Underneath them, he finds peace. Satisfaction.

 _Mike would come,_ he thinks with wonder. _If something like Prentiss ever tried it again, Mike would come. He’d help._

“Thanks,” he mumbles. “I actually really appreciate that. It’s…nice. To know. Um. Might help with the worm dreams a little bit, which is good because I get a lot of them. Not sure why. I just can’t seem to not think about them anymore.

Mike gives a derisive snort. “Lingering. Sounds about right for Filth. Christ, if there’s one thing I can’t stand. That was actually one of the first powers I ran into- _The Journal of a Plague Year,_ that was it. Brought the house down while I was studying it. It, uh, killed my parents, actually. Years ago now. Think I was about seventeen.”

Martin takes a sharp breath. “Oh,” he says quietly. “I’m…sorry. I- really, I am. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“I’m not,” Mike says casually. “Doesn’t make any difference to me, it was years ago. And it got a lot easier to hunt down books after that, what with the life insurance payout, so, blessing in disguise. I don’t feel anything now. Although.” He goes very quiet. When he speaks again, he sounds uncertain. “I cared at the time, I think,” he says. “I remember. Felt like someone had taken a filleting knife to my insides, I cared that much. It was years before I got slightly more normal about it. Yeah, uh. I used to care. Suppose I stopped after I gave up that part of me.”

“I’m…sorry.”

“It’s weird, I haven’t actually thought about it in years. Thought about _them_ , even.”

“Would you like to think about them now?” Martin asks. “I can go, I’ll call you again tomorrow. If you want.”

“Yeah,” Mike says slowly. “Yeah, actually, that’d be…that’d be good.”

“I’m here if you want to talk.”

“Thanks. Might take you up on that sometime.”

Martin ends the call. It’s a long time before he gets back to sleep.

*

Martin is dreaming, and the Archives are dark. He stands outside Jon’s office.

Inside, Jon is packing. There are boxes on his desk, his chair, the floor at his feet. He’s filling them with possessions; his spider-webbed lighter, a pack of cigarettes, his fountain pen collection, the spare ties and change of clothes he keeps for emergencies. Most of the boxes are filled by his books. They’ve accrued in the years he’s had the office, creeping across his shelves, dusted twice weekly. He’s always been fastidious about his books.

Elias is helping; shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, jacket discarded on the back of a chair. He is courteous, gentle, passing Jon volumes from the higher shelves and talking to him in a low tone. Jon responds with nods or shakes of his head. He doesn’t speak.

Martin has failed, and Jon is going to die. After everything, all the protection he managed to achieve was that Jon be granted enough time to get his affairs in order.

He stands in the doorway. There’s nothing else he can do.

 _Sorry,_ he thinks dully. Dull like Jon’s eyes as the news sank in. Dull like the ink on the page, as Martin’s signature on a contract made him the newest Archivist. Dull like the clouds outside, hanging ominous and unmoving.

“Waiting to move in?” Elias says to him. “I would have thought you could spare Jon a few hours to pack.” There is no mercy in those oddly gleaming eyes. They shine sharp as pen nibs. In them lies a promise: Martin’s life is about to get considerably more difficult.

“I just,” Martin swallows hard. “Just wanted to see if I could help at all.” Jon won’t look at him. That might be the worst part.

“No,” Elias tells him. “No, the time for your help has passed. You’re not needed here.” He places a book on the desk, touching Jon’s shoulder as he passes. Comes to the doorway where Martin is frozen; it’s dark, but he casts an inky black shadow far too long for his elegant frame. It eats at the world. Eats at Martin.

“You failed,” Elias says as the last of the light bleeds from the room around him. As Jon is consumed by darkness. “You didn’t try hard enough, and you failed.”

Martin wakes mouthing denials at a white plaster ceiling. He fumbles for his phone. It’s half an hour away from dawn, and he knows Mike has plans for the day; an early flight, a week-long trip overseas for reasons he has told Martin not to ask about. It’s not a good time to call him. Instead, Martin texts.

_Bad dreams again. Good morning btw._

_Hope your flight goes well, let me know when you land._

_Also, when you come back we should do that thing we’ve been putting off. I keep dreaming about Jon being dead and I hate it. Please?_

_Safe travels._

Mike messages back eventually; he’s casual, chatty, talking about his trip. Sends pictures and comments on how pushy the locals are, how much he hates the traffic, how difficult the accents are to work out.

He doesn’t mention Martin’s messages at all.

*

A week later, Martin’s phone rings. He sees Mike’s name on the screen; his stomach gives an unexpected lurch.

“Hi,” he says. “Are you back from New York? I liked the pictures you sent, they were amazing.”

“Oh, er, sure. You’re welcome. Hi, by the way. Yeah, I got back this afternoon.”

“Want me to come over?” Martin asks. “Just to hang out, or.” The _or_ hangs between them like a deflating helium balloon, like the threat it is and also isn’t. _Or we could have sex. Or we could stop messing around and do what we agreed to. Or you could finally tell me you’re satisfied, and Jon’s safe. Or._

Martin breathes against the phone. He wonders if he can hear Mike too, breathing in the silence, not sure what to say. He feels guilty; he’s made things awkward now, and Mike’s barely just got back into the country, probably needs a rest before he can start thinking about another round of revenge.

“I’m sorry-,” Martin starts.

“We’re even,” Mike says abruptly. “Tell your Archivist he can sleep soundly, I’m not going to be showing up on his doorstep. He can consider himself forgiven. We’re done here. It was nice knowing you.”

“Wait, what-”

The call ends before Martin can formulate words, can process and respond to what he’s being told.

Martin stands in his kitchen in an old T-Shirt and worn jeans, a dead phone held to one ear. Stands for far too long before he realises that the pit in his stomach is not relief, and it is not gratitude, and that his reprieve feels like an unforeseen breakup.

After a while, he cries. He doesn’t care enough to make himself stop.

*

“Well, I can’t say it’s the outcome I was expecting,” Elias says. “But you did manage to get Jon out of a nasty situation, for which you should be commended. Well done, Martin. The sacrificial virgin paid off in the end.”

“Oh,” is all Martin can say. He looks at Elias, elegant and calm, utterly unconcerned, and thinks, _I’ll never forgive you for saying that last. I forgive you for sending me to Mike. I forgive you for thinking I would die, and allowing it. I forgive you for trading my life for Jon’s. But not for what you just said. You didn’t need to do that._

“Consider yourself off the hook for the moment,” Elias tells him. “I’ll see about getting you some kind of reward. We could probably spare you for a week, if you wanted to take a trip somewhere. Paris, maybe?”

 _Fuck you_ , Martin thinks. _I hate you so much._ He doesn’t respond. Elias shrugs and turns to leave.

“You know, you’re really similar,” Martin says abruptly. Elias pauses in the doorway and turns to acknowledge him. Elegant, unconcerned. Abstracted from Martin’s pain. “You and Mike. You look pretty human, but only if people aren’t looking too closely. And after a while, the mask starts…flaking.”

Elias inclines his head. His eyes are momentarily _wrong_. Deep black, inky, the light reflecting off them in wavering pools. “Yes,” he says simply. “Your point?”

“I didn’t have a point,” Martin says. “But I think on the whole I prefer Mike. Because even though he doesn’t have to, he makes an effort. He didn’t have to be kind to me, or go out of his way not to hurt me, or, or do things he knew I’d like. He could have done anything at all. Wouldn’t have made a difference to him. But still, he was kind. You wouldn’t know where to begin with that. And I…pity Jon. I really, really do. He deserves better.”

Elias waits him out. And then he says, politely, “Are you finished?”

“No,” Martin says. “Not even close. But it’s got nothing to do with you, so.” He turns away from Elias’ knowing smile, from the rustle of his clothing as he leaves; soft and subtle, like the whisper of owl’s wings.

*****

Mike opens his front door and gives Martin a blank look. “Okay,” he says. “Sorry, was I not clear enough on the phone? Your boss needs it in writing?”

Martin clenches his fists. He’s shaking, he realises. Has been the whole way here. “No, he- no,” he says. “I’m here for myself. Because you just…told me, out of nowhere, okay, you just _suddenly_ told me you were done, and I want to know why. I don’t think that’s too much to ask? You can’t just do that to people, it’s actually really upsetting!” His voice is rising in volume. In tone too; high pitched, upset. That always happens. He hates it.

Mike watches him warily. “You don’t even want to be here.”

“Yes, I do! I didn’t at first, but it’s been nice! You’ve been nice! You just…we work well together? We’re _good_ , and I can relax around you, and it’s weird but you- you sort of make me happy. So I’d appreciate it if you could take that into account before bloody breaking up with me over the phone.”

“Right, uh,” Mike says. “Breaking up with you? News to me, I sort of thought you were around because your Archivist sent you.”

“I wasn’t,” Martin snaps at him. “Or I was, but not for ages now.”

“Yeah, but my point is, I didn’t know that.” Mike steps back, allowing entry to the house. Martin brushes past him, storming into the hallway. And then stops. Doesn’t know what to do with himself. Mike looks as lost as he feels. “I just got thinking about it while I was away and I didn’t want to do that to you anymore. I mean, the sex thing, it’s a stupid way to get back at a guy who clearly doesn’t give a damn. At the end of the day, the only person I’d be hurting is you. And you don’t deserve that.” They look at each other.

“Wow,” Martin says shakily. “It almost sounds like you care.”

“Martin,” Mike says. “Er. How do I put this. Just-You’re too good for this. Any of it. And that’s why something nasty is going to end up killing you in the worst way possible, but you know what? It won’t be me. I don’t want to be the thing that gives you nightmares.”

“Oh,” Martin says. It’s high pitched, pathetically thin; he can’t help that. On the inside, he feels rock-solid, determined. Finally sure of himself. Finally unafraid. “Well, I mean, you don’t give me nightmares. Dreams, yeah, but they’re not…bad dreams. They’re actually quite nice, I mean-” he stammers himself into silence. Mike watches him with a blank expression that Martin has learnt to read through, learnt not to be discouraged by. It’s not that Mike doesn’t care. He just doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do here.

“D’you want-” Mike says, gesturing towards to kitchen, the tea, the awkward, helpless conversation they’ll fumble their way through and come out just as confused by. The sensible, safe approach. Martin swallows hard.

“Actually,” he says, “I’d really like- I want you to fuck me. Properly. That’s what I want. Just...” He breathes in deep. “I want you.”

For the first time in a long while, looking into Mike’s too-pale eyes is making him dizzy. The ground lurches slightly, and his stomach with it. Martin doesn’t look away.

Mike blinks first.

“Okay,” he says. He’s not his usual self; briefly ruffled, as if by a passing breeze. “Er. Right. So, that’s unexpected. If you’re sure-”

“Positive,” Martin blurts. “Never been more sure of anything, I’m…yeah. I’m sure.”

“Good to know.” Tentatively, Mike smiles. It’s an odd expression on him; always is, mismatched to the empty eyes, clouded like the skies in a storm. But he tries. “In that case. I…don’t really want many things these days, you know how it is. But you’re a bit different. So. Yeah. Let’s do this, I guess.”

It’s not the seduction Martin’s spent years envisioning. Not roses on the bedspread, music in the background, sentiment and romance, the frightening bits tactfully blurred. It’s not his fantasies. Nothing like them.

 _This_ , he thinks, _is better._

He takes Mike by the hand and drags him into the bedroom.

*

“Easy,” Mike says, his teeth on the edge of Martin’s earlobe, a hand stroking Martin’s back. “I need you to relax for me a bit more.”

“I am.”

“You’re tight.”

“I know, I just,” Martin makes a high, shocked sound as Mike sucks briefly on his earlobe. “It’s nice, and I can’t help it.”

“We could try again later. I could get you off like this, get you nice and relaxed, and then we could give it another go in a bit. You’re young, you’d be fine.”

“ _Please_ ,” Martin says. “Please, please, just, can we try, I’ll be alright if we do, and if I have to wait any longer I…don’t know.”

“Well, since you asked nicely,” Mike says, and laughs as Martin reaches back, grabs for his hair and misses. He’s careful about sliding his fingers free, taking his time about it; stops part way, pushes them back in and presses down in a way that has Martin gasping. It’s unnecessary, it’s blatant teasing, it’s not at all what he should be doing. It’s the best thing Martin’s ever felt. He twists around again and says, “kiss me?”

Mike does.

“Come on,” he says against Martin’s mouth. “Up on your knees now- yeah, there you go. God, look at you. You’re gorgeous.”

“I bet the Internet told you to say that.”

“Might have done,” Mike agrees. “ _Ten things to say to your boyfriend when he’s human and you’re not but you’re having sex anyway._ That one was number five.”

Martin laughs. “That’s a terrible title.” It’s not quite bad enough to distract him from the odd feeling of Mike’s fingers easing out of him, smearing excess lube around his hole. Lingering around his rim and threatening to slip back inside of him, as if Mike can’t make up his mind if it’s worth teasing Martin to tears before he delivers.

“You’re so sensitive here,” Mike tells him. “It’s like I can _feel_ your pulse speed up every time I.” He presses his thumb to the edge of Martin’s hole, not quite hard enough to slip inside. Testing for resistance. Martin shivers. He’s pretty sure he can feel his _own_ pulse speed up. Finds himself unconsciously pushing his knees further apart, spreading himself open. It should feel awkward. But he’s hot all over, flushed to the roots of his hair, and he doesn’t have it in him to care anymore.

“I’m ready,” he mutters. His face is pressed into the bedspread; he’s happy to leave it there for the moment. “I really am, oh god, please, I really want it.” He feels Mike’s thumb slide past his rim, pushing at his edges, stretching him gently. It doesn’t even sting anymore.

“Better,” Mike decides, and Martin gives a muffled, frustrated yell into the bedspread. “Yeah, alright, I’m getting there.”

“What happened to the rush of the fall, and the adrenaline, and everything happening _quickly_?”

“Storms can be slow,” Mike tells him, unbearably cheerful. “The sky is immeasurably patient.”

“Okay, well, it turns out I’m not.”

“No,” Mike agrees. “Turns out you’re bossy as anything.” He breathes sharply on the back of Martin’s neck, and Martin is-

_Falling, the air rushing past his ears, his face, his hair, making his eyes water. The bedspread is gone when he looks down, though he can feel it under his hands and knees and shins; below, the emptiness opens up like a pit in his stomach. So high up he can’t see ground. So far from Earth he has nothing but air and sky, as cold as Mike’s skin. Nothing but ice on his eyelashes and the tip of Mike’s cock very slowly stretching him open._

_“_ Oh _,” Martin mouths, or would if his lungs could find the breath through the pressure. If the air would hold still for long enough for his mouth to shape words from it. Maybe it does. He can’t hear himself talk._

“I’m going to catch you now,” _he hears Mike say, the words distant to his ears._ “Don’t tense up on me, I’ll go slow.” _And the rush of air is dying down to a soft whistle, to a caress up the skin of his back, adrenaline burning a path through his veins,_

And when he lands, Mike is inside him.

“Okay, wow, okay,” Martin sucks in air. The reflex shivering starts up; he barely notices. He’s panting hard, his breath loud in his ears where the air has stopped its impossible roar, and he _aches_. “That was, um, wow-”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever dropped who actually relaxes when they’re falling,” Mike says. “Thought it might help.”

“Oh god, you’re actually.”

“Yeah, just a little. You alright?”

“A _little_?” Martin shifts his weight gingerly, pushing back against the blunt pressure that splits him apart, stretches him open in a way that fingers never managed. _It’s so much_ , he thinks, dizzy. He fumbles for his own cock where it threatens to soften between his thighs, but even that is little more than a distraction. He doesn’t remember Mike being so large in his mouth, his hands, but the stretch of it feels impossible, hot and all-consuming. Martin sobs.

“Yeah, see, it was easier when you were falling,” Mike tells him. He’s already pulling back, easing his cock free as Martin shivers under him. “It’s like you’ve scared yourself stiff. No pun intended.”

Martin laughs in spite of himself, giggling breathlessly against the bedspread. “It’s not my fault you’re enormous.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“I want to make a Vast joke, but.”

“I might never forgive you,” Mike agrees. He’s teasing, dragging the head of his cock across Martin’s hole, laughing as he twitches. Still slick, threatening to push back in; Martin fists his own cock, rocks into the sweaty heat of his hand. Tries to relax. He is scared, a bit. Scared of pain, scared of an intrusion he can’t control, scared above all that it’ll end up terrible, after everything. Another milestone he’ll ruin for himself. Scared he’ll spend the rest of his life thinking back, wondering if it might have been different, better, if he’d done it another way, at another time, with another person-

“Yeah, okay,” Martin whispers. “I’ve freaked myself out. Sorry.”

“Hey.” Mike leans over him, his chest pressing up against Martin’s spine. He coaxes Martin’s hand free of his cock and twines their fingers together; for a moment, Martin thinks back to an afternoon walk they took through Hyde Park, of Mike giving him a thoughtful look and asking, _Is this the part where we hold hands? Seems like it might be, but correct me if I’m wrong._ A month ago, he realises. How has it been that long?

“Offer’s still there,” Mike tells him. His chest is a cold contrast to Martin’s overheated skin. All but the scar; that burns its usual unending heat, searing into Martin’s spine. “We can go back to fingers and try again later. There’s no rule saying it has to be now.” His voice is soft, soothing, and Martin thinks, _like rain on the sidewalk_. He stirs.

“One more time,” he says.

“Up to you.”

“Can you do the falling thing again?”

“Do you one better,” Mike says, and the world disappears.

It’s dark this time. Star-speckled sky in all directions, flickering faintly, breaking up the all-consuming black. Flashing like lighthouse beams on the sea. The air is cold up here. Soothed by the sear of Mike’s scar, radiating against him, melting through the chill. Martin feels pressure start to build in his chest; psychological, the anticipation before the fall. There is no ground that he can see, but he knows it has to be there. He hovers, helpless, up among the stars, and the impact he cannot perceive is looming. His breath catches.

“Better?” Mike asks. Martin twists to find him, but he’s tucked himself away somewhere behind the stars, as distant as the world itself. One of his hands is on Martin’s flank, soothing him. The other draws small circles around his hole, smearing more cold lubricant past unresisting muscle. “Okay, yeah, definitely better.”

“Where are you?” Martin whispers. He’s hot and cold all over, his stomach tied in knots; the fall is seconds away, he knows it. The air that sits so still around him will start to roar in his ears, assault his senses and obliterate his mind. And then the ground will come. “You’re not here.”

“Sure about that?”

Martin gasps soundlessly as the blunt intrusion of Mike’s cock begins to stretch him open again. It’s all he can feel; here among the stars, he has nothing to cling to, no thoughts to distract, no crunching self-made terror in his stomach. Just the promise of the fall. Just the slick push between his legs, an opening in fractional thrusts that sets his nerve endings on fire. He’s rocking back into it before he can help himself. Feels Mike’s free hand on his back, keeping him in check.

Martin sobs in frustration.

“You’re fine,” he says, though the words are garbled, lost in the endless sky. “That’s good, you can, you can, just-”

“When I’m ready,” Mike tells him. “Look where you are, Martin. You don’t give the orders here.”

Martin gives way, feels the head of Mike’s cock slip past the last point of resistance. It’s in him now. Stretching his inner walls, sliding slowly deeper. The barest friction, but it’s all Martin has right now, and his entire body feels like it’s on fire.

“Oh _god, please._ ” He doesn’t recognise his own voice. He’s never sounded like that in his life.

He is distantly aware of touching himself, clumsily pushing into his own hand. It barely registers; feels muted somehow, although he’s definitely hard, leaking a little around his fingers. That doesn’t seem important. It’s background noise to Mike’s slow thrusts, the way he rocks slightly deeper each time. Pulls back, the head of his cock tugging against Martin’s aching muscles. It burns when he does it. Instinctively, Martin clenches tight around him.

“Fucking _hell_ , Martin.” It is, Martin realises, the first time he’s heard Mike swear. The most uneven he’s ever heard the other man, who is so often calm, so often above it all. Not so much now. Now he’s as lost as Martin is.

Martin blinks stars from his watering eyes and finds himself grinning.

He can’t track the moment when Mike stops testing him and starts to set a steady rhythm; it happens over time, a slow building friction that sets white heat searing up Martin’s body. He thinks about lightning. Thinks about teetering on the edge of the fall, about Mike’s hand on the small of his back, pushing his spine into an arch that sets him face first against the threat of the ground, sobbing as Mike takes him deeper.

It would be easy to say that he comes like an inrush of thunder, unexpected and, briefly, all-consuming. Or like a flash of lightning, burning him up from the inside. Like storm winds searing his skin from the inside out, or the rush of the fall that ends as he strikes the ground, sobbing.

He’s back on the bed, Mike easing gently out of him, smearing lubricant and semen down the back of Martin’s thighs. They are both panting. Their breath lining up as Mike leans in and Martin twists to kiss him, a mess of open mouth and tongue, saliva smearing across their lips. He’s shaking terribly. He thinks Mike might be too.

“-amazing,” Mike tells him between kisses. “The way you felt up there, right on the edge of falling, and you loved it, that was amazing. Never done anything like that before-”

“-I can’t believe how good that was, I was, there were stars? How did you- oh god, you felt so good-”

Martin holds him, or tries to. He runs into trouble as Mike tries to do the same to him, and they wrestle each other down onto the covers before settling on their sides, arms around ribs and legs intertwined. Mike is still, long before Martin’s breath settles. That’s fine. They lean into each other and, for a while, pretend they’re the same.

*

Martin still has nightmares. They lurk at the edge of his consciousness, like shadows dancing beyond the light of a campfire. They are shaped like worms and encroaching walls, like people he knows and doesn’t know, like echoes of himself that have tried, and tried, and failed. They are shaped like the lifeless bodies of his friends and co-workers; shaped like a monster that moves with a whisper of owl wings, with eyes that stab like pen nibs, watching him as it bleeds ink into the Archive floors.

Martin wakes up. Rolls over under the covers and leans his forehead against the back of Mike’s neck.

“Bad dreams?”

“Mhm.”

“C’mere then.”

Mike always wakes easy, sleeps as light as a cloud in a clear, still sky. His skin is cold and his scar is hot; he breathes ice on Martin’s lips.

Martin dreams of skyscrapers. Cities beneath his feet, the wind that ruffles his hair like a lover. He sits on the edge, dangles his legs, and leans his shoulder on Mike’s.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Martin says at some point. “The deal we made. I was supposed to pay you back, I was- and you went and gave me the sky.”

Mike gives him a thoughtful look. “Is that something from one of your poems? Sounds like it could be.”

“Don’t pretend you suddenly care about poetry,” Martin says, laughing. He feels the usual thrill he gets from teasing Mike and getting away with it, from being allowed to. A small, forbidden happiness, a moment of sunshine breaking through clouds.

Mike watches him with those eerie eyes and a friendly mismatched smile. “’I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o’er vales and hills…’”

Stunned, Martin stares at him. “Did you just- Wordsworth? You said you didn’t like poetry! Now you’re quoting bloody _Wordsworth_ at me, like…like it’s nothing!”

“It _is_ nothing,” Mike says. “Really. I, er, might have done a bit of research. Prepared a few things. Just in case they happened to be relevant, you know? I’m not actually very good at this.”

“Could have fooled me,” Martin says earnestly. “Wow. That’s actually…really thoughtful of you.”

“I’ve had that one for ages now. Thought I might need it to break the ice one day, something like that.”

“Well, you’ve smashed it,” Martin says. “It’s more broken than the polar ice caps. Oh god, that didn’t work at all. Forget I said that.”

“Not a chance.”

In Martin’s dreams, he perches on a skyscraper, a city under his feet, and kisses a monster with cloud-pale eyes and a scar like the lightning that claimed him.

And when he wakes, he does it again.


End file.
